Our first full day in Paris started with the obvious: breakfast pastries. We left a little earlier than needed in order to give ourselves time to find a great pastry shop, and, boy, did we ever! Joseph Boulangerie was our favorite bakery of the entire week, and we stopped by at least one other time to enjoy their beautiful, delicious pastries.
Central Paris Walking Tour
There is one guarantee when Emily and I plan a trip: if there’s a walking tour available, we’re going to take it. I’ve bragged before in my post “Prague Day One: Walking Tour, Beer Spa, and Czech Cuisine” about Sandeman’s New Europe Walking Tours. I’ve now taken many of the tours that they offer, and I’ve yet to be disappointed. A walking tour is, in my opinion, the best way to get to know a new city at the beginning of a trip. Whether you’re getting to know the place you’ll be spending a leisurely week or trying to pack in as much “sight-seeing” as possible within a short trip, their tours are always fun, informative, and offer the opportunity to meet other travelers from around the world. Because Paris is very large and has so many distinct neighborhoods, the walking tour only focused on Central Paris, the Left Bank and Right Bank of the Seine River. After taking this walking tour we definitely felt more situated with the whereabouts of most everything we wanted to revisit in this part of Paris. As an unexpected bonus, our tour guide, whose name completely escapes me, formerly worked as a guide in the Notre-Dame de Paris. While we couldn’t enter the Cathedral due to the devastating fires of the previous April, his narrative about the iconic structure and its importance to the Parisian people had a lasting impact on us. Other places visited on the tour included the Latin Quarter, the Palais de Justice, Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie, Place Dauphine, the Institut de France, the Louvre, and the Tuileries.
Following our walking tour, we walked down through the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood, which is an upscale shopping and eating district on the Left Bank of the Seine. Our mission was to book a spa session for Emily at her favorite French cosmetic company’s brick-and-mortar location. More on this later in the week. After Emily booked her session, we found a place to grab a bite to eat just down the street from the cosmetic store on the corner of the busy street called Au Sauvignon. With a vast large selection of wines and many options of fresh French dishes, this was one of the best meals we enjoyed in Paris. Emily greatly enjoyed her pumpkin curry soup, while the smoked salmon hit the spot for me. Both washed down with a great glass of wine, of course. After eating we strolled around the area and walked by Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the oldest church in Paris and the namesake of this neighborhood. Around its perimeter was a small Christmas market, but unfortunately it was closing as we arrived. We made it in time for me to enjoy some more Vin Chaud, though!
By this point we had wandered quite far from our hotel, so getting an Uber for the ride home was a must. Since the metro system was closed for the week, we had to do a ton of walking, but we knew that if we weren’t careful, we would wear ourselves out and pay for it on a later occasion. So our plan each day was to walk the majority of the day and take a rideshare back to the hotel. For the most part, this was a decent plan. But on one or two occasions we found ourselves completely out of luck because Paris’s rush hour had started, and I’m sure you can imagine how terrible it was with much heavier automobile traffic than usual due to the circumstances. It was a bummer to have to travel this way, but it did give us a chance to try some different ride share apps in a foreign country, which we had never done before.
Paris Christmas Lights Tour
One of the main reasons that we were so excited to travel to Paris at this time of the year was to see the city lit up at night. What better way to get up close and marvel at the city’s Christmas light displays than on the top of an open-air bus? We booked tickets to our tour through Viator.com and were definitely nervous that it would be cancelled due to the strikes in Paris and the current state of travel. Luckily, though, the city emptied out a lot after rush hour, so the tour was able to continue with a slightly modified route. We bundled up to keep warm in the below freezing temperatures which felt even colder on top of the bus on a breezy evening. I must admit, we had another type of blanket as well – we brought champagne in our water bottles! I’ll never forget how much fun this night was. Three hours under Paris’s night lights with my love, entranced by all the beauty of the city at Christmas time. This experience is definitely a must-do if you travel to Paris around the Holidays and was a perfect and fun ending to our day.
